D'Elle

Well, allingande, I stand corrected. You know vastly more about agility than I do; I have only done some several years ago now and never in competition. Thanks much for correcting me, because I need to get things like this right. I am glad I am wrong about this because it means the dog and person don't have to wait as long t o get started.

Recall just means come to me. I use it whenever we are off leash and there's a reason I need the dog to be closer to me, even if the dog is only 20 feet away, such as being on a dirt road and a car is coming. It's also for come into the house and any other time I need the dog to come. It's not always stationary or any other one thing, it's just Come To Me Now. It seems pretty simple to me. What about that is confusing to you?

Interesting! I wonder if whether or not they eat ticks depends on the environment they are in. Probably if more delicious things are available they won't. But nevertheless, they are interesting, and a harmless species if they are left alone. They have their place in the ecosystem. I have had free range chickens as well, Mark Billadeau. Once the free range was a large fenced-in area - about an acre for a half dozen chickens - and they got shut into a coop at night for safety and to encourage them to lay their eggs inside. The other time they were someone's chickens who just wandered into my place and when the guy took them home they came back, so he let them go. I didn't fence them in, just let them be, and hunted for their eggs. (I had lots of time for that kind of thing at the time). They lasted a long time...over a year... and raised babies and all. Don't know where they hid at night. But of course eventually their numbers decreased and they were all gone, as will always happen unless there's a guard dog such as you have. Much more likely to be coyotes than anything else that got them where I was at the time.

Sure. I am always happy to tell someone about stuff I like to do.

Well said. Every (adult) dog that I know who is well trained in Canine Freestyle (which could also be called a whole lot of tricks if one wanted to) will also do all of those things. Just sayin'. Many of the cues that we train for Freestyle are also useful in other ways. Most have verbal and hand cues, although in freestyle verbal is emphasized. They will ignore other dogs and people when off leash if told to because they are required to do that in the ring and at performances where they may be surrounded by an audience that sometimes includes dogs. They are not reactive, because again, that won't work. They know how to walk on left or right side, and directly behind because those are things we train for dancing. They will also walk in front: ditto. None of us have taken our dogs to obedience classes. A few of us have done or do agility or scent work. But those skills you talk about were trained as part of "trick" training, or else trained separately just as you have. No dog knows how to do those things well unless they have been trained to do them -- you trained your dog to do those things and clearly had success. But don't discount "trick" training or paint it all with a broad brush. Sure, if all you teach is sit up, roll over and shake a paw, it won't train them to walk on a leash.. No matter what, those things have to be separately taught, one way or another. My dogs learned all those things you mention........ except for the initial learning to walk on a leash and recall and other basics as a puppy or new dog,.......as a result of freestyle training. My dogs will often, if unsure about something, check back with me to see if I have a cue for them. I never trained them to do that, but it sure is a useful behavior when off leash. So in my opinion the only accurate thing to say is that if you want your dog to have certain skills you need to train them . And that training will accumulate, no matter whether the context is "tricks" or obedience or deliberately training "life skills", and everything you train, if you are training well, will strengthen the relationship and help the dog to make better choices on things you may not even have trained specifically.

This is correct. They are not in the least bit dumb. But as noted above they don't have the ability to move rapidly and have bad eyesight. I always find it interesting when someone calls a species "dumb". There is no species of being that is "dumb". Each one is perfectly adapted to be what they are and to live in their environment. People tend to apply human standards to animals, and judge their intelligence by those standards, but of course other species do not conform to human standards, so it is not fair or accurate to decide a species is dumb based on how human beings measure intelligence. All creatures are intelligent in being what they are. Of course, if you mess too much with the environment of any species, and crowd them out of space, as we have done all over the planet, some of those species, such as the coyote, will adapt well and still thrive, and others will not. But that is determined by many factors, and has nothing to do with intelligence. As scientists research and study more and more different species of animals they invariably discover that if they look deeply enough into the actions of any creature they find a great deal of natural intelligence in that creature. This has recently been shown in the study of octopus, for instance, and there are many others. Study opossums and you will find that they are highly intelligent animals.

I never think of using a dog any more than using a friend. If I had sheep, of course the dog would be trained on the sheep, but I would be doing it with the dog as a team and we would be working as equals as much as I could manage that. And of course the dog would love it so it would be for the dog as well as for me. I don't think as much about what I want to do; I think more about what the dog wants to do. A very active dog who is very smart and doesn't have sheep needs to do something. So I try a variety of things. Some of these things are a lot of fun for me, but I am doing them for the dog more than for me. If the dog doesn't really want to dance, for instance, I don't ask the dog to dance. If the dog gets too old to enjoy dancing I might switch to scent work which is not nearly as much fun for me but makes the dog happy. For me it's all about the dog. My experience is that, even with dogs who are not as capable as border collies, the more I teach the dog to do, the more the dog learns to think well for him or herself. If I have a dog who is well trained in a few things, I notice that dog is a lot more likely to have good life skills in general than a dog who isn't or has not yet been trained. I have seen this with numerous foster dogs and other people's dogs I have helped to train. So it is possible, Nuance, that your friend's dog has more life skills than you think. (Not that I know, since I don't know the dog). I just try things until I find an activity the dog loves and then we do that.

If that's the case, best to make your chicken coop more secure, because if an opossum can get in so can raccoons and skunks and coyotes and...... Better to make the coop safe than to kill all those animals, in my opinion. That's what I always did when I had chickens.

Hi Nuance, Of course it always depends on the dog and how fast that dog learns, and on the training skill of the handler for putting together a Freestyle routine, as well as diligence in training daily. Any really fancy move that you see has been taught little bits at a time. For instance, if you want the dog to go open a door and go inside and lie down, you would start out by simply clicking or making your marker sound and rewarding every time the dog got near the door. Then, once the dog knew that getting close to the door got rewarded, you would mark and reward every time the dog's face or nose got near the door knob. And so on. Very tiny steps to get to the whole behavior. Many rewards along the way. For someone who is skilled at this, training this kind of complex behavior might take a few weeks of working on it every day. Training sessions work best if they are not longer than 10 to 20 minutes, and you can't work on one thing the whole time. Once the dog knows how to learn behaviors, it goes faster. Training simple moves can take as little as a 3 to 5 minutes for a dog who knows how to learn, or much longer if the dog is a beginner. I have been doing it for a while, and it gets to the point that the dog knows that training is coming up when I get out the clicker and treats. Then, if I put something on the floor, the dog knows that I want him to do something with that thing, and all he has to do is figure out what I want. That's knowing how to learn. Members of my group usually take a month to three with a dog who knows how to learn to put together a routine that is reliably good enough for performance in public. All our dogs are used to this, though, and we all know how to train. But even for a beginner, it would never take a year to train a simple routine unless you didn't work on it or went about it the wrong way. And if a team (meaning the dog and the handler) is doing a very complex routine like what you see on the internet, it means they have been working together at less complex routines for some time, probably years, to build up to the point that they can learn and do a long and complex routine But training that particular routine wouldn't take a year. My group doesn't sync with each other in a group, and most Canine Freestylers don't. Competitions are generally for a 1 dog/ 1 person team, and sometimes for 2 dogs and a person. I have done it, and synching a routine with 4 dogs and 4 people is exhausting and takes a long ( and exhausting) time, but mostly that is because of the people forgetting the routine, not the dogs!. What takes the longest for me is finding the right tune, which can take weeks or even months, choreographing it, and memorizing the routine. Sometimes the dog already knows all the moves and all I have to do is make sure I have it memorized and cue my dog at the right moment so it goes with the music. That can take as little as a month to get ready for performance. If I am training several new behaviors, it takes longer. If you love to train your dog and do dog stuff with other dog people, it is really fun.

Thank you, Gentle Lake. If there were a "like" button you'd get two "likes". There's no reason to kill an opossum. And as you point out, lots of reasons not to!

Hi again, YES it is necessary to wait a full two years! No good agility trainer would even allow a dog in class who is younger than that. Unless you want to risk your dog's growth and joints being injured, knowing the injury could affect the dog's entire life and certainly could make agility impossible, wait until the dog is two years old. Just like the training itself, this is something you cannot rush if you care about your dog's health and mobility. There's really no way to train yourself except through experience. The reply you got on the other thread that suggested watching agility trials gave you a good idea, and I recommend that. If you have an agility group or club or occasional trials near where you live, go to them and watch. Maybe even volunteer to help if they need volunteers. Often they have enough help but you may be able to do something. That would get you the opportunity to get to know some people and visit with them and ask questions. Just remember to approach it slowly, not coming out with 100 questions or requests for help on the first day. And don't ever bring your dog with you. As tempting as that may be, don't do it. It won't be appreciated. You could also ask the local agility teacher if you can come and watch classes (again, without your dog). some are OK with that and some not but it wouldn't hurt to ask. I think it's great that you want to educate yourself ahead of time and wish you good luck.

I agree with Lawgirl: Drop It and Leave It are very important.

Nuance, if you have 95% you have more than the vast majority of people have. You can probably get it higher, and no harm in trying, but there will never be a time when you won't have to be aware that this could be the time your dog doesn't come. Your girl's 100% stand is terrific! And, there is no way to proof that in every possible circumstance, and under some unforeseen circumstance it won't be 100%. Big fear, for instance, is one thing that can cause a dog to forget their training. I have had beautifully trained dogs who really wanted to do what I asked them to do (that's a border collie for you) and I could trust them to do as I asked. And the best trained of them were still dogs, and I learned more than once that to count on it being every time without fail just because it has been 100% so far is unwise, because with any dog that one time may arrive on any day and of course it is always unexpected. More than once I have found myself saying to a dog, "why did you do that? What on earth were you thinking?", but of course the only answer is: He's a dog. It's very important, I have found, to remember that at all times and to take whatever precautions are appropriate to the circumstances, no matter how excellently trained the dog is.

There's actually a whole section here for dog sports, agility etc. Keep in mind that you cannot start training a dog in agility until he or she is at least 2 years old because it is too hard on the growing joints and muscles of a young dog. So you have plenty of time! What you can do with a puppy, though, is as soon as the puppy shots are finished, that the pup to many places with different textures to walk on. Uphill, downhill. Teach him to walk along a long piece of wood you have on the floor (ON the floor, not above). Teach him to walk (not jump) through a hula hoop. Make a wobble board by putting a ball underneath a square piece of wood and train him to feel comfortable standing on it and keeping his balance. You could even teach him to weave (slowly) through a set of garden stakes placed far apart, just so she learned the idea of going in and out between them. You can do all those things and it will prep him for the actual training. Go at everything very slowly, never push the dog, and train with lots of treats and praise and never let him see you disappointed if he makes a mistake. Praise all efforts abundantly, including those that fail. Make it fun for the puppy and only do 2-3 minutes of it at a time, maybe 5 when the dog is a bit older. You always want to stop while the dog still wants to do more. Don't ever do ay kind of training if you are feeling impatient or are in a bad mood. Finally, don't self teach unless you want to spend a lot of money or time making equipment and have a huge area in which to put it all up and maintain it. Classes are best. And are a lot of fun. If you ever want to compete, your dog needs to know how to do it with a bunch of other dogs around anyway, and the teacher can tell you what to do if you get stumped.

Opossums can be dangerous but only if cornered. Otherwise they are slow and tend to be peaceful, preferring to go away over fighting anyone. As the continent's only native marsupial, I personally think they should be respected and not killed. They are really fascinating animals who do no harm.

With dogs, as with people or any other being, there is no such thing as "perfect". I don't expect Perfect from my dogs. I do my best to get a solid recall, and I get one from my dogs, but I never forget that if they are off leash something could happen that would make my dog act in an unpredictable manner. It is always some degree of risk to let your dog off leash no matter how well trained they are. In relatively safe places and with a solid recall that is proofed daily, the risk is small. But you cannot depend on it that you dog will recall 100% of the time. As for how long to train, it takes as long as it takes for this particular individual dog. some learn it fast, some don't. You just keep training it, just like anything else, until you get it where you want it. I test my dogs' recall almost daily, and I always praise and give a little treat when they come to me. Since I use the Stand cue in different ways, my word for what you are describing is "Wait", which will stop my dog and cause them to turn toward me, whereupon I can then release them or recall. They're excellent at it but again, I wouldn't ever count on it 100%. To me, there's no trick to training recall. I simply make sure it is worth the dog's while to come to me (treat and praise), and while training and proofing I always make sure that coming to me doesn't ever mean the end of the fun. Of course, I start out first in the house and only work up very gradually to being off-leash in an unenclosed area. I won't risk that until I am very confident in the recall. I always stay very alert and aware of my surroundings and where my dog is when off leash outside, say on a hiking trail. It's up to me to make sure they are protected and that they don't bother anyone else by being off leash.

I am a clicker trainer and I always train with treats. Once the behavior is learned and proofed and solid, my treating becomes only occasional, but I always without fail praise the dog. When it comes to recall while on off-leash walks, I treat every time the dog comes back to me because I want always to reinforce this thoroughly. I do Musical Canine Freestyle, and that training is a bit different. In general I treat every time the dog does the behavior I ask for, even once it has been learned, for the first couple of weeks or so. Once I start putting moves together for a routine I treat less often, maybe every 3 or 4 moves instead if after each one, and there are always treats in my pocket. If I am going to do a performance, I ask for a few behaviors before going into the ring or on stage, and treat very heavily for that, letting the dog believe that I have a lot more treats in my pocket. Of course, no treats while performing but after the performance I treat the dog again. With a new dog or puppy, treats are always in my pocket all day and they are paid out for every little thing the dog gets right. I use whatever is right for the dog. Usually cheese is a high-value treat, or pieces of cooked chicken breast. Medium reward is soft training treats I buy, and lower reward for everyday things is Charlee Bears. So, bottom line is I never stop using treats with my dogs. I wouldn't have to give as many as I do, but it keeps things fun for them and makes their daily life a bit more exciting and I like to do that for my dogs.

Ooh, if I were there I would volunteer to be a puppy trainer!

How are your dogs doing at this point? Has it gotten any better for them? I understand the urge to just GoGetADog. I always try to overlap so that I don't ever find myself without a dog, because I wouldn't last a week without a dog in the house. And who knows where that might lead me. Have you thought about fostering a dog....even if not a border collie....in the meantime just so you have one in the house and to work with and train and all that good stuff? I have been without a border collie for a while, and don't want to get a young BC while my small terrier is so elderly, but at some point I will be in that market again. I wish you the best of luck in finding the puppy of your dreams, and soon. :-)

How is your dog going to play tic tac toe? How is this going to work, exactly? I am interested to know what you have in mind.

Your Lucy sounds like a delight. Border collie puppies are usually a handful at first, but they take so well to training the majority of the time that it really is a joy. You just have to be able and happily willing to put in all the time and effort. When it pays off, it pays off big, because a well balanced and trained border collie is the best dog in the world. (Not that I am biased at all!). I know a border collie who tends to jump on people and be too enthusiastic until she learns that that particular individual cannot be jumped on either. She seems to have to learn it with each new individual. So when a three year old child came to visit, her owner was keeping a very sharp eye on her. The child walked up to the dog, balancing a plate of (human) cookies in one hand, and formally introduced herself by name to the dog, and the dog just melted at her feet and was entirely gentle with her the whole time they were visiting. These dogs are sensitive and it can often be seen in how they respond to others, especially the very young and the elderly and anyone who is infirm. It is a treat to see that.

So sorry that you lost Robin; I know how it feels to suddenly no longer have the furry individual who took up so much room in your home and your heart. Just by being there, my dogs are always a huge presence for me. Even though it has now been years since Jes and Kit died (in my avatar), I think of them every day and remember their quirks and their constant presence in my life with such fondness. I wish I could have just kept those dogs forever. One of my favorite foster dogs also had lymphoma and died earlier than one would have wished. I had kept in touch because the woman who adopted him turned into a sort of friend, so I got to see him over the years. I, too, would like to know more about cancer in dogs and what might be early warning signs. I wish for you peace in your heart and only the most happy memories of your Robin.

I know I am coming in a bit late here, but just want to say that KIKOPUP has some very good training videos on YouTube that deal with on-leash reactivity and also reactivity in general. I highly recommend her. The videos are clear, concise, include demonstration, and she doesn't ever waste your time with chatter or promotion, but gets right to the point.

Another vote for good quality leather leashes, which will last if, as has been noted, a puppy doesn't chew them and, I will add, if you put leather conditioner on them now and then the same as y ou would for a good pair of leather boots. A fellow dog person I know swears by her neoprene leashes, which do look very good quality, but I personally prefer the leather as they are more supple,. I go for narrow ones, because the wider ones do not allow me to feel the movement of the dog as well. Suzanne Clothier sells excellent leather leashes on her website. Expensive, but will last forever if cared for well.

Thanks, Ruth. I agree that it is a real shame this dog is not getting the chance to at least try medication and see how it goes. Whenever I give the dog a Kong and she settles down, it looks clearly to me as if she is relieved not to "have" to be frantic and trying to get to the cat, because she has been given something else to do. From this, and other things I have observed, it seems clear to me that the medication would give the dog the room and the peace in her mind that she needs in order to be the Good Dog she obviously wants to be. I will try your suggestion on behavioral modification, if the owner agrees, and also keep working very gently to encourage her to try the medication. And thanks for the recommendation on which medication to try - I have passed this along to my friend.